Once your child or student has mastered short letter sounds they can begin learning long vowel sounds. Here are four hands-on activities you can use to help them practice these sounds. You could use these same activities for learning sight words and short vowel sounds too. If you want to see more, check out my Ebook that contains 40 hands-on activities for learning to read!
1. Spell Long Vowel Words With Different Letters.
Use magnet letters, Scrabble tile, foam letters or you can print your own letters and laminate them. Have struggling students look at a long vowel word written on a card and copy the letters. Have the higher achieving students spell the word completely on their own.
Try something new and make your own letters using bottle caps! Download my bottle cap center free by clicking the button.
2. Match The Word With Its Picture.
Students need to read the word, recognize it’s meaning and find the picture that matches it.
3. Write Long Vowel Words On Whiteboards Or With Playdough.
Here is an awesome homemade playdough recipe:
- 1/2 cup of boiling water
- 1/2 cup flour
- 1 teaspoon cream of tarter
- 1/4 cup salt
- 1 1/2 teaspoon canola oil
- 4-5 drops of food coloring
- Combine water and food coloring in a pot and bring to a boil.
- Combine your dry ingredients in a separate bowl.
- Remove water from heat and add the oil.
- Slowly stir in the dry ingredients. Continue mixing until the playdough forms a ball.
- When the playdough is cool enough, knead it until it it no longer sticky.
4. BINGO!
My students love bingo. You can create your own bingo cards easily online using words or pictures. Some of my favorite bingo sites are:
Osric (for Bingo cards with images)
My Free Bingo Cards (for cards with words)
There are several ways you can practice long vowel words with Bingo cards. You can print various long vowel words on the Bingo card and show student’s a picture of the word. They need to read the words on their card and find which one matches the picture. This could be done as a center or a whole class.
Another way you could play Bingo is to print the pictures on the card and have the teacher or a student say the long vowel word. Students would then find the picture on the card.
Finally, you can print the long vowel word on the Bingo card and say the word aloud to the whole class. Students need to read the words on their card and find the same word you said.
Get all of these ideas and MORE in my Long Vowel Centers Pack! Click the image.
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